


Gay, Astray, and Not Okay

by brjfaricy



Category: Original Work
Genre: Colorado, Coming Back Together, Friendship, Growing Up, Old Friends, Other, Religious commentary, Short Story, contemporary fiction, slight - Freeform, teen drama, teen struggles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:00:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23955733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brjfaricy/pseuds/brjfaricy
Summary: Growing up in an expanding town, young Beatrice is force to reflect on the expansions made in herself and others after stumbling across an ill-kept secret that brings her and her two lost friends back to each other."Growing up in the suburbs in the great state of Colorado, living just off the I-25, but feeling miles away from the rest of the world — it has come to define me in all the ways I have since turned around to define it by."
Kudos: 5





	1. All the Time that Has Passed

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in a caffeine-induced haze to meet the deadline for a competition I had heard of two days before the due date. I did not win. Hopefully, other people like it more than they did.
> 
> ALSO. Because I guess it needs to be said. This is a work of FICTION. Any characters or incidents mirroring real-life is unintentional.
> 
> Thank you!

**All the Time that has Passed**

I

Growing up in the suburbs in the great state of Colorado, living just off _the_ I-25, while feeling miles away from the rest of the world — it has come to define me in all the ways I have since turned around to define it by. When I think back, I think home. I think of three stupid kids with entire other worlds trapped in their craniums, running through small patches of forest that, when you stood in the middle, felt like they might just never end. I think of mountains stretching over houses; I think of the gradual crowdedness that would accompany the transition from town to city in all the years that expanded my adolescence. When I think of this place, I think of my small church, my tight knit neighborhood and stretches of identical-looking houses. I think of expansion. I think of transition.

I think of change.

In the Western state of Colorado, where the mountains act as a border from the rest of the world, change was all that I knew – all that _we_ knew. In just the time it took us to transition from silly kids with sticks for swords to almost adults with futures in need of considering, change was all encompassing. The small church of less then a hundred people became commercialized, obtained a new auditorium, a sign, and a logo. Forests turned into suburbs. The roads expanded, construction always happening somewhere inconvenient. A dozen Starbucks popped up on every corner and the population of our town doubled in half a decade. The very kingdom of our youths became unrecognizable. And, somewhere in that time, so did we.

That’s why we didn’t talk anymore, I used to think, all the change.

Even co-existing in the same space, the same church — it wasn’t enough to keep her and I together. Even though he had been the one to leave, it felt like, in a way, all three of us had journeyed far from the others.

But I saw her that day. I saw here every Sunday, but I _really_ saw her that day. Saw her, as the man on stage with tan skin and two vibrant sleeves of concise tattoos gave his testimony.

This fancy word: _testimony_ — it’s your Jesus story. It’s your Christianity walk. It’s how you get from point A (being miserable and godless) to point B (being happy and with God). It’s not usually that simple, though. Every person’s story is different; and I certainly don’t mean to minimize the importance of these stories, especially on the people who have experienced these instances. I just need you to understand the most basic attributes of what they are.

Because, the more messed up your testimony is, the more it’s praised. The worse you are at Point A, the more impressive it is seen that you made it to Point B. Testimonies hold this weight in the Christian world; one of attention, of praise, of being seen, and one I noticed from a young age.

As a kid, it made me desperate for something testimony-worthy to happen to me.

God, I was so stupid.

It’s the ending I messed up I think. I got the Point A down perfectly.

I never got to Point B.

I had heard so many at that point, I almost couldn’t stand it: the beats of hope, the theme of uncertainty – the lost sheep found by the shepherd, the child found by God –

If that was how it was supposed to go, I definitely went backwards.

Emotion poured into the words of the man on stage. Each word delivered with a punch. Each end of a sentence delivered like the end of a verse. I didn’t doubt what he said. I didn’t doubt that it was important. But, when, he ended his testimony with: “No matter how far away I was, it didn’t matter to him. No matter how far you are, doesn’t matter either. If I found my way back to him, you can too,” I couldn’t bring myself to believe that.

Beside me, my mother smiled. On my other side, my step-dad nodded his head, calm. Condescending, really, but it’s not like he was aware he was doing it. And if my mother thought she was sly in the look she cast my way, the raised brow that met up into her bangs, which matched her perfectly golden chin length hair, she was kidding herself.

But maybe I was meant to see it.

Maybe I’m _always_ meant to see it.

We applauded the man as he walked off the stage and the sound pulled me from my head back into the world around me. This testimony thing, it had been going on all month, part of some sort of theme, some sort of sermon series. Every week another person told their story and the around me people would clap their hands and nod their heads and every week I would sit there and wonder when they were going to realize how dangerous this is – glorifying the drift from God, the drift into the darkness.

I clutched my hands until I left crescents in my palms.

The sermon ended. My legs felt restless. But we weren’t allowed to leave just yet. The pastor, Mr. Sanchez, stood at the end of the stage and thanked us for being there. Reoccurring as this bit was, I knew what was to be expected even before he announced that we would have a new member joining us at our church. This time, it was a young man who had just graduated from the local (only) high school in the area just weeks before when the school year wrapped up.

As he walked to the stage to be recognized as a member by the rest of the congregation, I recognized him. Not in any way that held meaning, though. He was short but stout, like the teapot from the rhyme. Despite him having a full head of it, he had combed his light hair over his head like an old man might. He dressed like an old man, too: a sweater vest and a flat cap.

And then I saw her; the tight rings of black hair were a dead giveaway; her skin, the pretty shade of brown leaves in the fall, even more so. She sat a few rows ahead of me, and, if I’m being honest, I was aware of that before I really took a moment to see her. I was always aware of where she was, ever since she abandoned me; always looking to make sure we wouldn’t cross paths.

In the row a few ahead of mine, she breathed in sharp and her eyes widened.

Fear.

She was afraid.

Even as I recognize that expression in her round eyes, she was standing, moving — leaving. Calmly, she exited out the side door. No one gave her a second look, except –

The short man shaking her father’s – the preacher’s – hand watched her leave. None of it sat well with me.

It was like my mom traced my gaze. She must have. Must’ve seen Carla leave too, because she leaned in and whispered: “You should invite Carla over. It’s been awhile.”

Awhile meant three years. Three distant years by Carla’s doing, not mine.

Her fault, not mine.

My mom knew this. Yet, every so often, she would lean in and try to convince me that enough time had passed. As if that would even make a difference.

Carla dressed like a proper young lady. She acted like one too. It was a swift contrast to the way _I_ dressed (which my mom said was “like an unrespectable man”), and the way _I_ acted. In my mother’s word: “ungrateful.”

I don’t think my mom would trade me for her, but I do think that if my mom had the ability to snap her fingers and make me act just like Carla, though, she’d do it in a heartbeat.

The room grew hotter. I watched the door. Why was Carla scared?

Why did I care?

“Bathroom,” I excused in a whisper to my mom.

Even as our pastor gave the final words of farewell and thanks for attendance, I went out the same door. The voices closed off as it shut behind me. The door led to a hallway that wrapped to the main foyer. Both of which had not existed close to six years back. This whole part of the church had been added on at that time.

Carla wasn’t in the foyer either. The growing volume of voices meant there was a definite threat of those doors opening soon and way too many people being around me at a given time. Or, at least, that’s the excuse I told myself as I started in the direction of the place we all used to hide, the place she’d most likely go if _hiding_ was what she intended to do.

Like I said, this church had been majorly expanded. The old auditorium, which had once been able to hold all of us (had felt massive to me as a child) held only the teenagers of the church now. Their class was held in the evening, so, at that moment, the area was abandoned and lights were turned off. That itself wasn’t the hiding spot. There was a door on the side of the stage. Once, it had been used for equipment, now it was an over-crowded storage closet.

Having not tried to go in there in so long, when the doorknob turned, I was surprised.

I stepped through the partly open door and immediately tripped over a box in the dark.

Trying again, this time using my phone as a flashlight, I stepped over discarded boxes preventing the door from being opened all the way and headed towards the back – the back where light streamed from under a closed door, signaling someone’s (Carla’s) presence.

I wondered if I should just leave.

Three years was a long time.

“Bee?”

I whipped around, almost falling into a, once changing room, now, overstuffed closet, as I came to face Carla.

Confused, she hesitated. “Beatrice,” she corrected herself.

 _Good_ , I thought. She wasn’t allowed to call me _Bee_ anymore. Not after everything.

But there was something wrong with her voice, like it was clogged. It only took one glance to see the glints of tear tracks framing her eyes. She crossed her arms. “What are you doing here?” She asked it quietly, like someone might hear us.

Grip digging into the edges of my phone, I looked anywhere but at her. She asked that as if that place wasn’t somewhere that used to belong to me as much as her — no, it didn’t belong to either of our individual selves. It belonged to _us_. The collective. The unit. The force that was broken, first, when Henry left and a second time when Carla herself decided I wasn’t worth her time.

It was enough to almost make me laugh.

I really shouldn’t have come.

A _thud_ rang from the bathroom at the end of the hall, the one with yellow florescent light seeping out from under the door. Her and I both looked from it to each other with matching confused looks.

No one else knew of this place but us. After the renovations, it was collectively wiped from the adult’s memory as its purpose became: “all inclusive storage-closet _.”_ But us, the kids who were here way too often, we could never forget our hideout, the meeting place of our own sacred cult.

The toilet didn’t even work anymore in there. The faucet, similarly, had lost its supply of water in the renovation. The only reason that room wasn’t stuffed full of boxes as well was the doing of us two girls, and the boy who’d been sent to Michigan five years prior, when we had attempted to reclaim the invaded fort occupied by junk.

That had only lasted about a year. I would still come after everything fell apart, occasionally. If I felt overwhelmed or when everything felt too foreign.

The invasion — the thought of someone else in there — I think it, more than curiosity, was what motivated me to step forward (over another box), and reach for the handle.

“Beatrice, wait,” Carla whisper-ordered.

Which was the final push to get me to yank the door open. Carla at my back, grabbed my shoulder as if that could stop me.

I hadn’t seen him in five years; hadn’t seen him so tall, with his hair cut down from the fro he wore it in exclusively as a kid – hadn’t seen him looking like anything other than a kid ever.

I had also never seen him with his lips attached to another boy’s.

In the limited space between wall and stall where the sink also occupied, they jerked apart from each other. The not-Henry boy whacked his head on the empty paper towel dispenser in his desperation to fling himself away. I knew him as well. Parker. He wasn’t like us, a staff kid. But he was a frequent attendee. Had been so for many a year. Our interests had never crossed so neither had any conversation; I knew him like he likely knew me: through name and reputation only.

I locked gazes with Henry. The dim yellow lighting on his cherry-tinged ivory complexion made him look almost ill. But maybe that was just the terror reflecting in his dark eyes. Maybe I should’ve felt bad, awful, horrified for him, for the implications – for what this meant.

But he was also here, in Colorado. And that was what took precedence in my thoughts.

Behind me, Carla covered her mouth with her hand. I wondered if this bothered her, if this made her as upset as Henry’s parents would be if they ever found out. Henry’s parents who had stayed here in all the years he’d been in Michigan…

Some things were starting to make a bit more sense to me.

Parker’s chest heaved, the panic clear as he jerked gazes between Henry and I.

This was an interesting turn of events for sure. I crossed my arms. I looked Henry up and down. When had he gotten so tall?

The sharp curve of his Adam’s-apple bobbed. He clutched his hands into fists.

I met his gaze once more, “So, you’re back now.”

No answer.

At the time, I equated it to anger, but maybe it was something more like hurt that flared in my chest, burning my lungs as I dropped my arms.

“I won’t tell anyone.” I turned around, pushing past Carla and left the stupid bathroom in the crowded storage closet in the expanded church full of confusing people – all of which I had once called home.

II

I wish I could say that what followed was as simple as my own response to the situation at hand. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

I found out about it in whispers, in the conversations overheard from my mom and step-dad when they would forget I was there. I learned all of the things I am about to relent to you:

Henry was back (that one I had learned myself actually). He was back after five years due to an unknown _something_ – undisclosed by both him and his family. He had gotten back a couple weeks before our run-in, but hadn’t attended church until that Sunday.

Henry was gay. (Again, something I’d discerned for myself, there was just one little thing about that though). I heard my parents talking about it. When I intervened in the conversation not meant for me, even as it happened on either side of me at the dinner table with a, “Wait, how do you know?” The response received made my blood turn hot.

“Erica’s son—,” (that’s Parker, by the way), “—said Henry made a pass at him.” My fork had scraped across my plate, making the ugliest of screeches. “But,” my mom added with that mom-authority clear in her voice, “that is not something for you to share with anyone else. It’s a private matter.”

So private _we_ were talking about it. So private she had been told.

I wanted to tell her what I saw, reveal Parker’s own secret like he had so cruelly done to Henry. But even my big mouth and I knew that wasn’t my place.

“I heard,” my mom continued almost like she couldn’t help herself. I often wondered if that was actually the case. “That was why his parents sent him to Michigan. To live with some relatives and get a more Christian school environment.”

I dropped my fork to the table. Maybe I spoke without words just as much as she did.

“Bee,” my mom criticized, knowing. “It was to help him.”

_To help him._

After dinner, I said I was going for a walk and it wasn’t even a lie. Not until I arrived at the park that rested almost perfectly as a midpoint between house and church, both of my once homes. The park was surrounded by forest, by trees that stretched just long enough to make you feel like they would never end when you stood in their center at the creaky, rusty playground I used to spend far too much time at, swinging until I felt like I might just throw up in the bushes.

Excuses are lousy, so I won’t make any. I tried not to every time I lit a match and ignited the end of a cigarette. I knew what I was doing. I knew it’s horrific for your health. I knew it was a bad habit. I knew I shouldn’t.

But I wasn’t addicted. I know everyone says that, but I really wasn’t… I don’t think. Not addicted to cigarettes at least.

I only smoked about a cigarette a week, just to feed the impulse so it didn’t eat me alive. Not the nicotine one, though I know that’s the conclusion you will draw anyway. It was the other one. The real reason I decided to smoke and decided not to quit every week once a week at that park.

It tasted awful. It smelled worse. It made me feel a little light headed. I liked that part.

When my phone started buzzing in my pocket, disrupting the steady flow of music to my ears, I expected nothing more than spam. At the most, it could be my parents telling me to come home. When I didn’t recognize the number, I hit the button to end it. When it rang again I wondered if I might know who was trying to call me.

I was surprisingly not surprised when she responded to my answer with a, “Bee— atrice.” This was a necessary correction.

“Carla,” I responded, kicking my foot into the dirt. “What do you want?” I tried to sound cold. I don’t know if it worked.

“Henry,” she said. Our ridiculous conversation was being spoken only in names. “We need to talk about Henry.”

I worried my lip with my teeth even as I considered my worry for him. I just wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what she had to say on the matter. The Carla I knew wouldn’t have bat an eye at it. But maybe I didn’t really know this Carla anymore.

“What about him?”

“I’m worried.” She sounded genuine.

“What can we do?”

“I think we should go talk to him.”

Talk. That would be weird. After he moved, there were a couple phone calls, a few group texts – even fewer emails. It only took a few months for it all to fade as the reality of distance seeped in. Besides, his responses had always been so stilted it was hard to keep the conversations going. But maybe it was our fault too.

“I don’t know if he wants to hear from us,” I said at last.

“He needs someone. This isn’t —.” Silence. “This isn’t fair.”

“Were your parents talking about it too?” I asked, with a cruel scoff. Sometimes I wondered if I could say _anything_ that wasn’t cruel. Maybe that had been why she left…

“I can’t believe he did that. Parker, I mean. What a — what a —.”

“Asshole,” I finished. “You can say it. It’s not untrue.”

More silence.

“He was scared, probably.” I decided to fill the silence, watching the end of my cancer stick turn to ash between my fingers. “Because we saw. Thought we would tell. Decided to save his own skin and throw Henry under the bus.”

“It was still awful.”

“It was. But so is the fact that he felt scared enough to do that.”

Silence. What did she think about this kind of stuff? What was her opinion? How far apart had we actually journeyed? How different had we become?

“Is that a cigarette?”

I heard her voice in my ear like an echo from the one distantly ahead of me.

She moved towards me, off the sidewalk to the playground. I jerked, tearing the half wilted cig from my lips, and twisted in the swing, trying to conceal the cancer stick behind my leg, as if the smoke wouldn’t give it away.

She hesitated in front of me, gaze tracing down to it. Her gaze flitted back up to meet mine.

“Why are you here?” I realized I was still holding the phone up. I brought it down and ended the call.

“I figured you’d be here.” She looked down at the cigarette again. “I see you here a lot,” she lowered herself into the swing next to mine, the second of three. “Especially during the summer.”

 _Yet you never bothered to say hello_.

She flinched and I realized I didn’t just say it in my head.

“He needs us.”

“He doesn’t need us.”

“He needs _somebody_.”

I bit my lip.

“Do you have his number still?”

I was silent.

“You really shouldn’t smoke. It’s really bad for you.”

I almost crushed the remainder of the paper stick in my hand. I gritted out, “Yeah, that’s kinda the point.”

She looked confused.

“He’s not going to want to talk to us.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

“Fine, then.” She stood up, voice curt. “Give up then. Fulfill your summer by smoking in a park all by yourself instead trying. Instead of doing _something_ – instead of helping an old friend.”

I stood up to face her. She was shorter than me now. That hadn’t always been the case. I rather liked that it was that way now.

“What are you hoping to gain from this, huh?” I called back at her. “You think that Henry comes back after five years and we can just go back to how things used to be when we were ten? I noticed you haven’t been around your friends.” _The ones you traded me for_. “You want me back now that they’ve ditched you?”

She held me in a scowl – a real rarity. I had forgotten how powerful her anger could be.

And I _was_ being a jerk, but I also felt like I deserved to be one at that moment.

“You’re an asshole,” she said. “And you smell awful, like cigarettes.” She turned around and walked away.


	2. All the Things We Can Lose

**All the Things We Can Lose**

I

I should’ve let it go, but I couldn’t. Not when the summer kept carrying on. There was only so many times you could walk around your neighborhood listening to music before it started looking like you were canvassing the place. Only so many shows on Netflix you could watch before you felt like you were becoming one with your couch. Only so many times you could walk into your church and see the two people who used to be your whole world deliberately not looking at you.

It was weird. Henry still showed up, which I think was entirely due to his mother. He wasn’t shunned, or mistreated, or slandered. It wasn’t as dramatic as I’ve read about in stories, or seen in movies. Nobody punched him in the face or called him horrific names. It was more subtle, a silent approach.

The reality came in whispers, sympathy – care and love, but lack of understanding or willingness to even try. The way they spoke about it, like he was ill or dying. The way they approached his mom, like she was housing a cancer patient.

Not everyone cared, I don’t think. But enough did.

Meanwhile, I was busy caring about something else: about the two friends that my life had once circled entirely around. Both church and school, we had attended the same for all of our natural beginnings. Carla’s father had been the pastor for as long as my memory traced. My mother used to be the children’s minister, and Henry’s mother had been an assistant before the church expanded. We were always in those walls. Always together. It only made sense that, especially over the summers, we would find all sorts of adventures to uncover just within that building.

From wall to wall of that church, we had explored every galaxy in existence.

The world is supposed to expand as you grow older. I think ours just shrank.

And then there was Parker. He kept his head down, his face flushed. He held himself erect like a service man being yelled at by a superior. Afraid. He was afraid. But I still wanted to punch him in the face. Especially when he refused to look at mine.

In summer, when you’re fifteen and live in this town, there really is nowhere else to be on a Sunday night than back at the church. Youth group, Bible Study — whatever you want to call it. I attend, even though it feels stiff, like tape wrapped around skin. Like the two aren’t really supposed to go together: it and me. I attend to keep my parents sane. I attend because if I didn’t, I don’t know where I would see or interact with other human beings until school returned in August.

I attended, because, at the end of the day, that place and everything it was, everything it’s become — it was still my home. Just as much as the one I slept in.

Even if it didn’t feel like I fit in its walls anymore.

Youth group started with games, turned to singing, and ended with a message. It took place in the old auditorium, where the storage closet and bathroom hid behind the door beside the stage.

She was there, Carla. She was always there, in that church, that building — my home. I didn’t mind her presence usually. In fact, I don’t know if it could’ve felt like if she weren’t there. As long as she kept her distance, I kept the peace. But the distance had been tread upon and seeing her — seeing her look back at me — it made me feel like I made a horrible mistake coming. I crossed my arms and didn’t even attempt to mouth the words as those around me began to sing.

I didn’t think I could make the words work. Not with the verse they kept repeating:

_“I give it all to you, God, /Trusting that you’ll make/Something beautiful out of me.”_

The repeated line could flow from their tongues as often as it wanted, it didn’t make it real to me. Couldn’t make me feel. Out loud in a chorus too overpowering to hear, my voice found words it could actually make sense of, found words that were not total lies:

_“I wish I could give it to you, God, /But I cannot trust you to make/Something beautiful out of me.”_

Being honest with yourself is the first step. But the honesty had never been the problem. It had been returning – returning to a time when this was a smaller building in a smaller town filled with smiles instead of whispers, love instead of judgment, a small child instead of me…

I still cannot figure out which was the factor that actually changed in that equation. If things even changed at all or if I just grew enough to see over the barriers of juvenile blindness.

Opposite wall from the stage, the doors opened.

Henry walked in, hood on, headphones in (the cord wrapping down his black sweatshirt, disappearing into the pocket). He stood like a man ready for an attack, head bent down, expression guarded. I looked. I wasn’t the only one.

Parker wasn’t there. That was good at least, right?

Henry’s mom was behind him, standing shorter than him. Eyes livid and I knew they were in a fight moments before they stepped into that building, maybe even moments before the door opened. She put her hand on his arm to guide him in, only for him to shake her off. She turned around and left.

He looked at me. He looked at Carla.

He stood in the back row, away from both of us.

Carla stood in the front, where she belonged. But she wasn’t with her friends. She was never with them anymore. Even though they were there. The boy who dressed like an old man was with them. They stood in the same row, as me, in the middle, where I hoped to hide amongst the masses.

Every one was still singing the song. But I didn’t care about it anymore.

I turned, slipped passed the people in my row, and walked away, passing Henry who didn’t look up from where he was glaring at the back of the seat in front of him. I left the auditorium, went to a bathroom (a functioning one), and stood for what I deemed a reasonable time doing nothing but staring at myself in the mirror. After fixing my overly large bomber jacket, the one I stole from my father ages ago, I marched back in.

I didn’t return to my seat. I sat in the seat next to Henry. I crossed my arms, and slouched down, mimicking his posture. He watched me with uncertainty (but also like he was maybe pissed).

I just shrugged.

He turned away from me, headphones still in. But he didn’t move to a different seat. That was good at least.

We didn’t speak until the singing commenced. Right around when Carla shot us a look as she sat down to listen to the sermon. Henry tugged a headphone out – just one, the one by me, though. It wasn’t much, but I took it as an invitation.

“Why didn’t you tell us you were back?” I whispered to him.

“Why didn’t you ever call again?” He retorted quickly, silently, voices hidden in the back row.

“What do you mean?” I gave a confused look to communicate what my words may have been too quiet to.

He licked over his lips. “One day, you called, and then you never called again.”

“You didn’t call either,” I excused.

“So it’s settled,” he said with a nod and sarcastic tone in his voice. It matched his widening eyes and the attention he turned towards me. “We’re not friends. So, why are you bothering me?”

“Why did you leave?” I asked instead.

He turned forward again, fiddling with the white headphone. Other than those, the rest of his outfit was black. Blank pants. Black sweatshirt. “Everyone knows way too much now. I’m sure you could figure it out.”

He had been so odd those last few days – those last few days before he very suddenly wasn’t there anymore.

“How did they find out?”

“Same way you did.” He nodded. “I should really learn to lock a door, don’t you think?” There was aggression hiding behind the light-hearted tone he was playing with.

“Parker?” I asked, because it seemed he had been back to short a time to have developed whatever led to the bathroom, if it hadn’t already been in existence before.

He tugged his lip between his teeth. I took that as my answer.

“He’s an asshole,” I said.

Henry looked down.

“They sent you away.” That one wasn’t a question.

Not that he answered anyways.

“How was Michigan?” I tried a different approach.

“So cold in the winter,” he responded.

“Yeah?” I coaxed. That could almost start a real conversation. I could see the hints of the boy I once fought monsters with in my backyard behind the mask of indifference. “Why are you back?”

He bit his lip again, muttering the smallest of chuckles. “Because, somehow,” he shook his head, “sending me to an all-boys, Christian boarding school was not the best way to cure me.”

I nodded along, finding a scoff escaping my own lips.

He kept fidgeting with the headphone. I thought he might just break the wire off.

“I don’t care, you know. About what I saw.”

He just shrugged.

“Something you’d like to share with the group?” Our youth pastor crossed his arms, raising a brow at us from behind his square frames. “Beatrice?”

Why did he just signal me out? That wasn’t fair. I looked at Henry to convey that thought, but the sly smile he was trying to hide spoke his consideration of the same subject.

We used to be knights, the three of us. We’d fight all the bad guys that existed in our heads. We were young. We were brave. But we were brave without consequences.

“Just catching up with an old friend.” I didn’t intend for my tone to be challenging. It came out that way, regardless.

The Youth Pastor, Brian — because are they not _all_ named Brian? — looked from me to him and nodded. He wouldn’t address Henry. Not like this. Not here. Not when half the church had decided to treat him like he had contracted a terminal illness.

“Try to do that after the message.”

I nodded, leaning back. When I looked at Henry, he was shaking his head at me, eyes rolling almost into the back of his head. “Always so dramatic,” he whispered. “Guess people don’t really change.”

I never intended to be, yet, somehow, always was. But, Henry was responding. Jesting, even.

 _This is going well_ , I thought, just in time for it to abruptly stop going well.

A hand shot up in the air, one belonging to an overweight boy who went by the name Arch. I hadn’t been paying enough attention to what Brian was saying to gage what the boy might even begin asking. So, at first, I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand as he leaned forward in his chair and with his pitched voice and self-imposed superiority started with, “Aren’t we supposed to follow the _whole_ Bible? Deliberately disobeying what is written is the same as turning our backs on God.”

It rang very little meaning to me at first, until I saw how Henry’s hands clutched together, how Carla shot us a wide-eyed glance. And I realized the context of whatever I had missed. Realized just what Arch was implying over there.

I felt my heart jolt into overdrive, like my body thought we were under attack. Because, of all the people to rave about such a thing, _he_ shouldn’t even be allowed to consider it. Was the same guy who told everyone Carla kissed him (when she most certainly _did not_ ) in sixth grade after she turned down his invite to the spring dance — was that guy really the one trying to be all self-righteous?

“Yeah,” I spoke even as I could tell Henry (any maybe everyone else too) was begging me not to. “You’re right.” I somehow kept my voice steady even as I felt my pulse down to my toes. “We should be following everything the Bible says. Like,” I feigned like I was thinking, “what does it say about gluttony?”

And that was too far. Because I really only have two settings: miles in front of the line or sprinting right over it at a hundred miles per hour.

“Beatrice,” Brian said, startled that I would even do such a thing. I couldn’t even blame him. I was also startled.

Henry stood, and, walking passed me out of the row, continued on right out the doors.

The thrum of my pulse didn’t slow down in the slightest. Not under the consideration that I may have made things worse for him.

Carla stood first, but I was just behind her. My ears rang too loud to tell if anyone had called after us as we pushed out, first the auditorium door and then the one to the church, straight outside into the last remnants of the dying sunset.

The moon was full. I decided to blame it for what I just did.

“Henry,” Carla tried.

Henry was already clear across the parking lot, about to take the turn that led to a road that connected the neighborhoods of each of our houses.

I glanced at Carla and we both jogged to catch up with him.

“Stop walking so fast,” I protested. “God, you’re cheating with those long legs.”

And just as the church entrance turned from our view, he whipped around, chest heaving as he faced me. “What do you want?” He demanded, taking a step forward.

I took one back.

“What do you want from me?” He threw out his arm. “You haven’t spoken to me in years. And now what?” He looked from me to Carla. “Now you want to _save_ me? Be my friend again? I don’t need you to stand up for me.”

“I wasn’t standing up for you.” I stepped forward, imposing myself into his personal space as he had just done to me. “I was standing up _against_ him.”

“That’s real mature,” Carla muttered, crossing her arms.

“Oh, shut up,” I said at her. I looked back to Henry, sticking out my finger to point at him. “You left too.”

“I had no choice.” He tossed his hands out.

“No,” I cut him off. “You _also_ stopped calling. You _also_ pulled away. It wasn’t just us.”

He clenched his teeth, something vulnerable and sad flashing in his eyes. Abruptly, it turned into a cruel smile, a cruel laugh. “God,” he shook his head. “What are we even on about?” His words were light, but there was something twisted in his tone. “Why are you even here?” His whole body moved with the question. “We’re not friends anymore. And you two obviously hate each other now.” He gestured between us. “Yet, here you are. Here _we_ are.” The joke was very much out of his voice when he finished: “Pretending like we still give a damn about each other or anything else.”

“We do care,” Carla tried, dropping her arms. “We’re worried about you. We were _friends_ ,” she continued, looking at me for help I was not going to give her. “Doesn’t that mean something?”

I scoffed so loud it sounded like a _“ha!”_ “ _Mean_ something?” I turned to her. “Our friendship means something?” I threw my hand out. “Oh, wow. I wish I’d known that.” I pointed back at myself. “I wish _you’d_ known that when you ditched me for your Perfectly Perfect Christian friends the second we hit high school.”

“Is that what you’re so mad about?” She demanded back.

“Of course that’s what I am mad about!” I shouted back, actually shouted. “You were _all_ I had and you ditched me for — for — because I guess I wasn’t good enough for you.”

She stared after me for a second like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. “What was I supposed to do?” She demanded, taking a step forward, voice wavering. “You got so _different_.” She gestured to all of me as if that confirmed her point. “You got all dark and sad all. the. _time_.” She emphasized each word. “You were _scaring_ me.”

“I was suicidal, you jerk!” I yelled back, thoughtless – always thoughtless. “I needed you!”

That shocked her, snapped her like a rubber band to the forehead as she stumbled back the step she’d taken to advance on me. I almost thought she was going to apologize. But I suppose we had already stepped too far over the line of defense. I was already heaving in anger and she was tearing up.

“I was kid, Bee! You wouldn’t talk to anyone but me. I couldn’t carry that weight on my own.”

I shook my head at her, not even able to look at her as I continued on. “I couldn’t either!” My voice croaked with the coming of tears. I hated it – hated that she could make me cry. “Where are your perfect little friends now, huh?” I dug at her just because I could. “I don’t see them around anymore. Don’t see you with them. Did you grow fed up again and ditch them too?”

Carla stopped cold. Defenses were gone. Words empty. Just her and I and him.

I went too far again, didn’t I?

Streetlights glinted off the tears that had sprung into her eyes. She choked over them, turning away so we couldn’t see.

Definitely went too far. I felt bad. I really did. It’s why I said, “Hey. Hey, Car, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

She sniffled.

I looked to Henry for help, but one look from him told me he wasn’t offering.

Shuffling my feet against the asphalt, I really had no idea what to say next. The words always came out so easily; but fixing what happened when they met air – I had never been good at that part. So, I did what I do best, and I just started talking. “Remember when…” In just a few moments, I’d recounted some of our most notorious adventures; recounted the dragon we had slayed, the giant we’d gone to defeat, only to befriend – the lands we had saved. In just a few moments, I had gotten her to stop crying, gotten Henry to look at us – _really_ look at us, like I’d really looked at her for the first time in so long that day at the church.

“Come over,” I said as I finished. “Both of you. To my house. Please.”

II

They must’ve been feeling what I was, because they agreed. With both my parents at a dinner with some friends, I gathered every snack food in the house and we put on the movie we used to watch almost as often as we read our scriptures: _The Princess Bride_. Sometimes remembering the past is easier than considering the present. It has to be. It has to be why we lost ourselves in the _Remember when’s_. In the _“Remember when we watched this movie three times in row?”, “Remember when we’d have group sleepovers?”, “Remember when you tried to sword fight a raccoon and it came after you?”—_

_Remember when things weren’t so messed up?_

They were looking at me. I hadn’t meant to say it out loud. There was pity in their gazes, pity and —

“I didn’t know,” Carla started.

“Shut up, Car,” I said, looking to her. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.” I immensely regretted having done so, having made myself so vulnerable.

She looked back to the screen, where the two leads were rolling down a hill, a call of “ _as you wish!”_ breaking our silence.

“You got so weird after your dad left. I just —.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said. “I really don’t. I don’t know why I…”

“Why were you back there anyways?” Henry interrupted from where he was sprawled out on the couch. It was almost like he’d never been gone, though he now stretched much more than he used to. “Behind the old auditorium. I didn’t think anyone went back there anymore.”

I turned my entire body from where I was sitting on the floor to face him. “What were _you_ doing back there?”

“I really think that was quite self-explanatory.”

“Why _Parker_?” Carla asked then.

He looked away, mumbling his answer: “He was my first boyfriend before I was sent away.”

Neither Henry nor I was expecting the pillow Carla swatted him with.

 _“What?”_ He sat up.

“You had a _boyfriend_? And you didn’t _tell_ us!” She demanded.

A smile broke out on his face. “I didn’t know how.” He laid back down, tracing a pattern on the sofa. He looked at us then. “So what _were_ you doing?”

“I was actually coming after you, Carla.” I looked to her, finding her surprise facing me. “You looked scared in service. I just—,” I shrugged, “—I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Oh,” she said, and then was silent for a long moment. “Oh,” she repeated.

“Why were you scared?” Henry rolled on his stomach, facing Carla.

“It’s, um, not…” she took a deep breath. “It’s a long story.”

I grabbed the remote and paused the movie. “We have nothing but time.” I turned to her.

I think she was desperate to tell someone. Desperate to have someone listen. Because that was all it took for her to begin speaking.

That short, comb-over dunce that placed membership at our church — the recent graduate from the local high school, he had moved here that semester. Had moved here one semester until graduation and, thus, had credits he had to account for that ended up putting him in Carla’s literature class where he had sat beside her. From there, he hit on her against every brush off she had given him and asked her out without reading any of the signs.

When she told him “no,” he decided that was an acceptable reason to come after her. Not with a weapon, not with violence, but with his sharp charisma and Godly facade. The next week, he was eating lunch with the people she thought were her friends. And they all adored him. “He’s so charismatic. And he has so many scriptures memorized. But, like,” she hesitated. “He can’t be a Christian. Not really. Not when he…”

He had told her friend group all sorts of things about her and him. About how they were together, how she’d put out for him, how she’d broken his heart. Every time she tried to deny it, he’d twist her own words into the narrative he was fabricating.

“I just feel so _lost_ now,” she said awhile later. “I’ve done everything right, and it didn’t – it didn’t _matter_ in the end. They just chose him over me. And I just… I don’t feel like I belong there anymore. I don’t feel like I’m even allowed in those doors when he’s standing at their entrance. But, I feel like if I don’t go, if I stop going, I’m just letting him win.”

Lost. I never considered she might have the capacity to feel as _lost_ in that place as I did.

“They believed him. And I just don’t understand _why_? Why they believed him over me. All I can think of is that…”

“It’s ‘cause you’re a girl,” I finished.

She shrugged, holding her arm close. “I mean, I’m not _naive_ ,” she insisted, which was totally incorrect. “I know that’s a thing. I know it happens. I just — church, you know. I thought it would be different in a place that’s supposed to feel safe.”

“You don’t feel safe there?” Henry asked.

“Not as long as he’s there.”

“That’s harassment,” Henry said, at the same time I said,

“I’m gonna kill him.”

(One comment was more constructive than the other).

Henry’s mom called then. He cringed as he got to his feet. “If I’m not grounded for life, I’ll see you around,” he noted his farewell.

“Wait,” I stopped him. Stopped them both. I pulled my phone out. I wasn’t asking when I said, “Give me your number.”

After the door had closed behind him, and after we’d cleaned up the snacks and turned off the unfinished movie, Carla spoke: “I should probably leave too.” She shuffled her feet, holding onto her arm.

“I’ll walk you,” I said without hesitation. I didn’t even grab any shoes, liking the way the cold sidewalk felt against my bare soles, random jagged pebbles and all.

The night was still beautiful here. The stars still shone. Not as many as once did, but enough. More than to the north in Denver for sure, and more than south in the Springs. Even the night was changing though. Eventually, more stars would fade. Maybe one day all we would be able to see at all would be the moon.

“I’m sorry,” Carla insisted once more. She met my gaze in the night and said, “I should’ve been there. For you. I know that.”

I pressed my lips together, hands shoved deep into my jacket pockets and shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe I would’ve just dragged you down with me. Maybe it’s for the best.”

She didn’t fight me on that. “Are you still…?” She asked as we neared her house, a two-story blue structure with a white door.

After a pause, I answered. “I think about it everyday, but I don’t think I’m capable of it.”

She reached out, squeezing my arm. “Call me the next time you think about it, okay?”

I wasn’t sure I would, but I said, “okay,” anyways.

On my solo trek back, I pulled the pack of cigarettes from my jacket pocket, lighting one in the night. It was dark enough I wasn’t worried about a curious neighbor seeing me just to report back to my parents. But as the end burned red and smoke filled my throat, it felt only dry. Tasted only of ash. Felt only like a mistake. With a single puff taken, I removed the paper from my lips, snuffed it out against a fence, and I shoved it back in the pack.

III

I don’t remember when the conversation turned to yelling — when I started crying — when she stood up, over me from where I sat in the kitchen chair sobbing. I can’t even tell you how the conversation started, really. I know it was initiated when my mom wanted to talk about what I had said to Arch at Youth Group (nothing is private in a small town) and why I thought that behavior was "appropriate." I told her I was defending Henry. And then, I think I must’ve said something about homosexuality and the church. How I don’t think it’s fair. It had to be something like that. Something she took as an attack — on religion, on the church? I’m not really sure — something that needed to be defended, because, then, I was no longer being scolded. We were yelling. My step-dad was there – sitting there, trying to mediate every now and again, mostly staying out of it.

“Why are you crying?” My mom demanded, screamed really. “Why the hell do you care so much?”

And I saw it. I saw it flash through her eyes, saw it form in her mind before she even asked — asked in the same horrified tone she might’ve asked me if I murdered someone with: “Are you?”

“No!” I yelled back.

But, why did I care? Why was I sobbing over something that didn’t concern me? Since this moment, I have thought about it again and again. Why it hurt so much? That one conversation I had with my mom that wasn’t even about me. And I know now, I think, the answer.

Because, if he was condemned for something as trivial as that – as simple as the capacity to love a different gender – condemned in her eyes and theirs – supposedly condemned by so much more, then what hope was there for someone like me?

Communion was passed around as a lady I had known for longer than can be remembered played the piano on the stage. I took my tiny cup of grape juice and my tiny piece of bread and I did what I always do when we take communion, I mimicked: stared up at the big cross above the stage and pretended; pretended that I felt something doing that.

I wonder how many other people pretend.

You’re supposed to think about the sacrifice Jesus made, coming down to earth, sacrificing himself for our sins — it’s a moment of contemplation, of reverence, of repentance; we do it once a month.

Surely, there was a time when I used to do this and felt something. When I would bow my head and feel that presence mentioned in every single testimony this month — that presence I hadn’t felt in years (not since a new one took it’s place). At the very least, there must have been a time when I felt that reverence. When I looked at that cross and felt the weight of everything it represents. When I sipped my juice and crunched my wafer and felt the awe of a God who loved me enough to do such a thing for me.

I couldn’t feel anything anymore.

Maybe it was the repetition, the one too many times. Like a piece of art examined too closely for too long. I’m sure even the greatest art lover would grow tired of the _Starry Night_ after staring at it for so many years. It loses its affect. It loses its punch.

The first time someone looked me in the eyes and said “God loves you,” I must’ve felt like I could fly. When it happened of late, I just wondered what they wanted from me.

The first time I took communion, it must’ve meant something. Sitting there, I was just going through the motions.

Pretending.

Always pretending.

Not that I believed. I didn’t have to pretend with that. I _did_ believe. I still do. I just wasn’t ready to accept what believing meant in the man-made church. Wasn’t ready to accept that the power of Christ had not healed me, had not taken away my pain, had not fixed whatever snapped in my brain while my parents and everyone else was so adamant it could. I wasn’t ready to accept that I was defective in a way that wasn’t allowed in this building if they only knew.

So I pretended instead.

I used to think I was good at pretending. Thought I was a class-A actress when my mom and step-dad never brought up how suddenly everything inside of me shifted in a direction I had never anticipated. I realized later it wasn’t so much that I was a good actress as it was that they saw what they wanted to see in me. They used my own charade to hide the painful truth from themselves.

"Where's Henry?" Carla slid up next to my side where I leaned against the wall as my parents socialized within the hoard that filled the foyer after each service.

"No idea," I responded, trying not to think about how wonderful it felt to be back on speaking terms with her. "Where's Comb-Over?" That's what I had decided to call him.

"Haven't seen him. I think he'll come next service. He usually does."

I looked at her. How long had this been going on? Carla usually stayed for both services, stayed to support her father.

"Why haven't you told your dad?"

She took a deep breath, dropping her head against the wall as she faced me. "He said everyone deserves a chance to attend church and see God."

I scoffed. "That's bullshit."

"Bee," she leaned forward, criticizing, but amused. "Not in church," she insisted.

"He can _see God_ when I murder him for being a self-righteous creep."

She laughed, pitched and with a small snort – her forte. God, I'd missed that laugh.

"I'll stay," I offered. "With you. Next service. If he so much as looks at you, I'll murder him with my gaze." I glared to demonstrate my intent.

Her smile softened to something almost sad as she nodded. "Thank you."

"I'll tell my mom I'm staying. She'll be thrilled," I said with a shrug. "Maybe Henry will show up."

Henry’s mom did. _He_ did not though.

Comb-over also showed his face. Sat on the left side a few rows ahead of where we sat on the right. I didn't listen to the sermon because I was too busy staring him down, glaring at him as if that alone could set that stupid hairstyle on fire.

Carla swatted me to get me to stop, but it was half-hearted and I had no intention of doing so. I wouldn't have either. I would've stared him down for the whole service had my phone not gone off.

I thanked the heavens it was on vibrate even as the sudden motion in my pocket made me almost jump out of my skin. I tugged the device out, ready to cancel out the spam call, only to see Henry's caller ID staring up at me.

I remember thinking a very distinct: _Well, that can't be anything good_. I stood and shuffled out of the row, exiting the side door.

"Hello?" Standing in the hallway, I held the device to my ear.

"Why didn't you do it?" The words came immediately. Came ringing with something far away, something recognizable. Something that one part of my brain knew all too well but could never put into the right words. Something I recognized and wished I didn't.

"What – what do you…?" I started. "Do what?" I finished.

A pause. Then, "Kill yourself."

It's a blur, really, the moments immediately following that one. I didn't answer his question. I know that. I said only, "Where are you?"

"Home."

"Don't you do a damned thing," I ordered. (I pleaded).

The line ended.

Carla was there. I must've gotten her. Must've opened that side door and beckoned her. Or, maybe that hadn’t even been necessary. Maybe she got one look at my face and just _knew_. Because her hand was in mine and we were running across the parking lot, running to her car. At sixteen, she was the only one of us that could drive one. That had one. Even if – I considered, as I looked at the shiny Jeep Cherokee – the car wasn’t really _hers_ at all. It belonged to her father.

And technically, speaking for the law, she still wasn't allowed to drive with a passenger who wasn't a relative.

Didn't matter then. Hardly matters now.

I remember we were driving. She was driving, chest almost pressed to the steering wheel with how rigid her posture was. Wide, dark eyes watched the road in panic as we went exactly seven above the speed limit. The exact amount I had heard they won't pull you over for.

At some point Carla told me to call the cops. But I didn't. I don't know why. She then told me to call him. But I didn't do that either.

She parked mostly on the sidewalk. I was already stumbling from the passenger seat and charging up the driveway, trampling Henry's mother's flowers to get to the porch quicker, get my hands around the doorknob, yank on it, find it to be locked – It really was a blur. But, apparently, I grabbed a rock. Apparently I was ready to break the window even as Carla wrestled the weapon from my grip and brandished the spare key they always kept in the dirt of the flowerpot beside the door. I knew that. In sanity, I would've remembered it.

We were passed that point.

His house was exactly as I remembered it. Crowded, cluttered, full of natural light with way too many picture frames on the wall of the stairs – the stairs I took two at a time, rushing the familiar path around the banister to the room that could only ever exist in my mind as Henry's.

Always one step ahead of Carla, I wrenched the door open. She called for him. My own words were trapped in the cage that had formed in my neck. It pushed up against the walls of my throat, stabbing into muscle, strangling me.

The room wasn't crowded like the rest of the house, but it was just as cluttered. Just as cluttered and empty.

The door that led to his bathroom was closed.

In that very moment, I discovered just how desperately I did not want to see a dead body – the dead body of my friend, no less. Behind my eyelids as I reached the door, my brain had already stitched together a perfect replica of what that real-life image might look like. I discovered a new fear in that moment. One I never thought I would have.

But there was nothing that could keep me from him. So the door had to open.

The white tile had a way of making the blood look more vibrant, intoxicating – horrifying. Even if there wasn't that much of it, there was still _it._ It, and a voice.

"I wasn't going to do it," he said from where he sat on the bathroom floor, legs curled to his chest, eyes shining with tears as he adamantly stared straight ahead. "I wasn't going to do it," he repeated, but I don't think he was telling us.

I couldn't move. I had never been hit by a car, but I imagined it felt something like that. The pain in my chest only expanded at the realization that my fears would not be reality – not yet anyways. As if the fact that everything was okay (ish), with there being barely any blood, was somehow more shocking. As if every organ in my body had been preparing for a collision that never came and so it decided to feel like one had happened anyways.

Carla disappeared from my side for only a moment. One moment before she was stepping past me, a light blue blanket in hand as she kneeled next to him, took his left arm into her lap and wrapped the blanket around the damage done, concealing it more than anything else.

"I wasn't going to do it," he insisted.

"I believe you," she said.

I sank next to them on my knees; mostly, because I could not hold myself up any longer.

Henry cried. Sobbed, really. And Carla, always the gentle one, the caring one – she held him; held his head to her shoulder, their backs to the tub, me by their feet. And sirens.

I guess I had called the cops after all. I don't remember doing that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow me on instagram: [@brfjaricy](https://www.instagram.com/brjfaricy/)


	3. All the Words You Can Hear

**All the Words You Can Hear**

I

I would find all of these things out later, but I will tell you them now. The thing about living from your own head, in your own world, is that you are always missing what's happening in other people's worlds. What for me was a normal week, what for Carla was the same, for Henry had been a lot more. He'd left my house the Sunday before and everything had been fine. He had gotten yelled at for skipping out on the Youth Group he'd all but been ordered to attend, and then was grounded when he talked back to his mother with a, _"Why should I go when they obviously don't want me there!"_ She had assured him they did. She had assured him nothing had changed just because people knew. They still loved him. They were still there for him.

_"How can they be when even you aren't?”_

Maybe that was what actually led to the grounding. He wouldn't follow it though. Being grounded. Because Parker would text, would ask him to meet him at the park between my house and the church. And Henry would go.

 _"I still have feelings for him,"_ he'd tell me later. _"How stupid am I?"_

What he thought was going to be an apology was nothing of the sort. It was a desperate plea from a scared little boy for Henry to keep his distance… for him not to say anything… for him to get Carla and I to be quiet.

He would want to talk to someone in the days that followed. Not Carla or I, which maybe could be expected. So he turned to his sister – sat next to her at their kitchen table (literally covered from end to end in mail) and would ask her how she could do it. How _she_ could support him, love him, and still be so devoted to the church, to their mom, to God.

 _"I'd always thought she was on my side, you know,"_ he'd confess later _. "Even after I got sent away. I thought – I thought she understood. She always made it sound like she did. But…"_

She didn't, was her answer. Support him, that is. In different words, of course, she said something about loving the sinner, not the sin. Which was maybe fine, but then she also said something about God being able to fix it, if he would just open himself to it.

" _Do you think I didn't try?_ " he would voice in a spotted, white garb in a hospital bed with bandages around his wrist. " _Do you think I didn't beg? It didn't work._ "

One day, when I returned to the hospital to see Henry, Brian, with his square glasses and stereotypical youth-pastor beard was sitting outside his room. The door was closed.

"His mom's in there with Pastor Sanchez," Brian explained.

"Oh." I wanted to walk away. That would be odd though. I sat next to him.

Brian looked lost. I felt bad for him. I kicked my feet and stuffed my hands into the jacket's pockets.

"Don't you get hot in that thing?" he sat forward.

I shrugged.

He looked me over. I avoided meeting his gaze. He sighed and sat back. Whatever he had tried to say without speaking was lost on me. I was too busy think about what _I_ wanted to say.

And I'd never really been very good at the whole "unspoken" thing.

"We're going to lose him." I said. It was as if my own words had stolen all other sound from the hallway. But maybe that was just the frantic pulse in my ears; the ringing that always accompanied it. "You're going to lose him. You're going to lose us. All of us."

Brian was staring at me.

I still wouldn't look his way.

"And how do you suppose I stop that?" he asked, genuine mostly. Maybe a little frustrated.

For a moment, I really didn't have an answer. How do you fix that? How do you fix us? Fix what's wrong? Fix what's going to be wrong? It’s too much, isn’t it?

The door to Henry's room clicked open under the turn of a knob. I wasn't sure how good of an answer it was, but I did have one and it was the only one I had.

I stood up and walked aside as Henry's sister opened the door for Brian – stood up and headed for the vending machines at the end of the hall. Without checking to see if he even heard, I answered, "You could try listening to us."

"It was stupid," Henry said, lying in the backyard on a woven blanket, staring up at the blue sky. I sat criss-crossed in-between him and Carla, who was also splayed out on the grass, using my jacket to lie on.

"You won't find me disagreeing there." I tore my gaze from his bandaged arm and tugged at the grass.

Carla swatted my arm.

Henry chuckled softly.

I glanced at the window to see if his mom was still watching us. She'd been watching him like a hawk since the return from the hospital.

"Why did you call me?" I asked, returning my attention to the grass. "Why _me_?" I looked to him.

"I wanted you to talk me out of it." He shrugged. "I didn't _want_ to do it. I just didn't want…" he trailed off. He sighed. "I just didn't want this to be the rest of my life either."

"It won't." Carla rolled on her side and pushed herself up from the grass, leaning her head to her palm and elbow into the dirt.

I don't think he believed her.

"I know we're not exactly what you want, or even what you need." I tore at the grass. "But we are here, and we're not going anywhere, even if you want us to. You do have us, however lousy that may be."

He scoffed. "It's not lousy."

I shrugged.

He craned his head to look at the window. His mom was peering out once again, sure enough. "They're so pissed at me." He dropped his head back into the grass. "Its a loving pissed." His features screwed up, "I think." He shook it off. "But they're still pissed. They signed me up for therapy."

I nodded. I wasn't going to say it, but I was glad that was the case.

"Family therapy," he added with a wiggle of his eyebrows. "I don't really think it takes a therapist to tell you moving your kid around every time they do something gay isn't a healthy coping mechanism, but maybe hearing a professional say it will jog something in their minds." He huffed and rolled onto his side, facing me.

"It's strange, isn't it?" I met his mom's gaze in the window and she looked aside, moving away from the glass. "How much they'll hurt us out of love."

Both of them looked at me.

"What?" Carla voiced.

"It's concern, you know." I returned my attention to the grass. "They're worried for our souls. They're so scared for us, they forget to defend us from the things they should really be afraid of."

"Wow," Henry rolled back to face the sky. "You still got that dramatic flare. Glad time didn't separate you from it."

I threw my handful of grass at his face.

"Why aren't _you_ in therapy?" Carla asked me.

I shrugged. "Parents don't believe there's anything wrong with me." I rocked back until my spine also hit the ground. "They're too scared to even consider it."

Carla nodded.

"You never answered my question." Henry arched his neck to look at me. "Why didn't you do it?"

The answer was simple, but insufficient: I didn't know.

"Do you remember when we were kids," I started. "How we'd look at the mountains and there was that like rock formation?" I used my hands to demonstrate its approximate look. "The one that looks like a castle."

They nodded.

"Of course we remember," Carla said.

"I totally spent that money we were saving to go on our _big adventure_." Henry used air quotes with a laugh. "I think we greatly over-estimated how much that drive would cost us."

"It was going to be our first _real-life_ adventure. To visit the castle in the mountains." Carla smiled fondly at the memory. "As soon as one of us got our license, we were going to run away. Just for a few days. Just to find out what those rocks were."

"They're just rocks," I said.

"You've been?" Henry sounded betrayed.

"No." I shook my head. "But I looked it up. There's a hiking trail that leads to its base. It’s about a thirty-minute drive from here. I was going to finish our adventure and go by myself." I stared at a cloud that looked a lot like a pig. "I was going to kill myself there."

Once again, my voice had found a way to suck all other sound from the world.

"I never made it. I guess that's why I didn't do it."

Carla sat up, loose grass (my doing) tangled in her frizzy strands. She looked down on us, a plan dancing behind her eyes. I knew that look. It was a brilliant look. I hadn't seen it in awhile.

"We should go." The fence was blocking it, but she turned towards the mountain’s general location. Then she scampered to her feet. "I'm serious." She crossed her arms to demonstrate this. "Let's go."

"Right now?" Henry sat up, tilting his head at her.

"Yes," and she laughed.

"Did you not hear what I just said?" I pushed myself up. "Are you trying to get rid of me or something?"

She shook her head at me, scrunching up her nose. "Trust me, okay. We were always going to go, just as soon as one of us got our license." She gestured to herself, raising her eyebrows. "What other time is there but now? Let's go. Let's face it."

I wanted to. I wanted to go with her, with him, with _them_. I wanted to know what it felt like to stand at its top and look down. I was scared of what that knowledge might bring.

"You can't drive with passengers in the car yet." I pointed out.

"No one has to know," she whispered, eyes glinting, teeth shining.

I'd never been really good at telling her no.

II

Convincing Henry's mom wasn't nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. I mean, we did tell her we were going on a "nature hike." Carla said something about the fresh air being "good for him." And I was reminded why she was always the planner in every backyard revolutionary we had thrown. I'd almost forgotten she could be like this.

The car did, in fact, belong to her father. He'd let her drive it from the church (where she started that day babysitting for the women's bible-study), to Henry's house. He had not given her permission to drive it to the middle of nowhere to see a big rock. We did anyways.

"He's working until late," she said as she drove, even though we hadn't asked. "I'm sure he won't ever know," she added, again without being prompted. The only thing greater than her anxiety was probably her determination to keep going.

"We're going to have to climb this thing, aren't we?" Henry turned to me.

I shrugged.

"I'm not really in climbing clothes," he considered, tapping his chin.

I looked him up and down. He was wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt. "You're more prepared than we are."

"These are napping and movie sweats, not climbing sweats. There's a big difference," he insisted.

"Oh, okay," I humored him, casting Carla a look that made her snort.

"You two are always teaming up against me," he complained with a forced pout.

How did we get here? I wondered. How did we ever get back? It wouldn't last. I was sure it couldn't. Not in reality. Not outside the fantasy lands we used to map out in our heads. But for a moment – for _that_ moment – we were together, breaking the rules (and some minor laws), on the real-life adventure we'd promised we'd do as little kids. It felt surreal. It _was_ surreal. It couldn't last. But as long as I could experience it once, I wasn't too concerned with all of that.

Thirty minutes of _Lorde_ playing from the radio entertained us three idiots all the way to the base of a short hiking trail that led right to the base of the rock structure. The noise that had accompanied us within the car died to silence as we walked, partially because we were there, partially because _I_ was there.

Somehow those felt like two different things.

It was too hot for my jacket, so I carried it in my arms. Carried it as I led us right to the base.

And then we were there.

“Well,” Henry said after a long moment. “It sure is a rock.”

“A big rock,” Carla added, standing beside me.

“I don’t think we can climb it,” I said, staring up at the red stone, the giant landmark in a sea of trees. How did rocks like that even happen? How did it even get there? It definitely wasn’t the castle it looked like from such a distance (and with such imagination).

“Not with that attitude,” Henry called. He’d ventured around its side and was now standing, grinning, pointing at something behind it.

Carla and I met him where he stood, following where he was pointing at a hill that attached itself to the backside of the rock. The steep incline and rocky surface did inevitably lead to the top of the rock that faced the rest of the world.

It took us about thirty minutes to scale that thing, panting and heaving all of the while. Carla produced a bottle of water from her purse and we passed it around until it was depleted, then turned to scale the last bit. The hill’s surface was mostly made of loose rocks that made every step potentially your last. Brown dust was smeared on each of our backsides even as Henry and I hoisted Carla up the last bit onto the steady, flat surface of the giant rock.

I turned around.

And my small town didn’t feel so small anymore.

The wind, as it always seems to be in Colorado, was instigative, violet, tugging my hair and slapping me back in the face with it like it was a game. But I was standing on top of the world, so maybe that didn’t matter.

I walked to the edge. Without even looking, I could sense how Henry and Carla tensed up behind me.

I looked down.

It was far – very far. Not as far as I imagined so many times before though.

Carla’s hand wrapped to my arm. Not to pull me back, just to hold on. To make sure.

Why hadn’t I done it? Why didn’t I do it? I thought about what Henry had said. He didn’t _want_ to do it. He just wanted everything else to stop. It felt too familiar to push aside. But it still wasn’t an answer. Maybe I’d never really have an answer.

Henry stood on my other side, looking out, scrunching his eyes up against the sun. “I can’t believe we made it,” he scoffed, but it turned into a laugh midway, sounding a bit maniacal. But maybe that was appropriate.

 _If I had done it, I never would’ve made it here with you._ _Maybe that’s why I didn’t do it._

Whether or not I had spoken it out loud, they both looked at me like they knew.

III

We sat on the rock, elevated above (what felt like) the entire world. This action also helped block the relentless wind. We’d decided to stick around and watch the sunset. Might as well. We had come so far, after all, on this exhausting adventure.

“Would kid us be disappointed or proud?” Henry asked, looking out, thumb tracing the bandage on his opposite arm.

Looking at that bandage, Carla said, “Proud.”

Henry narrowed his gaze at her.

“Kid us may have fought dragons and overthrown kingdoms, but they had no idea what the real battles would be. What they would turn into, or would look like.”

“I don’t really think we’ve won any, though.” I flicked a pebble off the edge of the rock. The sun was beginning to glint off the surface in a way that made it even redder – even redder as the air around us tinted with a light blue, orange streaks mixed in from the sky.

“We’re still mid-revolution, mid-adventure, mid-journey,” Carla assured. “We’ll win in the end. Just like we did then.”

Staring from the rock over the expanse stretching east, all the hills, all the tress — the way the earth bent and twisted, rolled and climbed — I sometimes forgot just how beautiful my state was. How beautiful it could be.

“How do we win?” Henry asked, sounding in part like someone asking if there was an answer and also in part like someone asking the plan.

“I’m reevaluating my friend group,” Carla nodded, leaning back, weight rested on her palms. “I don’t think I want people around me who don’t even believe me when I need their help.”

“Good plan,” I nodded. “But we should also definitely file a report against Mr. Comb-over.”

She waved me off. I filed it away as something to fight for later.

“Your turn.” She looked to Henry.

“I didn’t realize this was a sharing exercise.” He repositioned himself, long legs sticking out.

Carla gave him _the_ look.

He took a deep breath. “Therapy’s a nice step, don’t you think?” He looked to me. “Your turn.”

I didn’t have a next step. And I told them as much.

“If you could do anything, anything that might make things better, make you feel better, what would that thing be?” Carla tried.

I didn’t have any sort of answer she wanted.

“I’d tell them,” I looked out across houses that looked like pebbles in the distance.

“Tell who what?” Henry laid down, staring up once more.

“Everyone. Anyone. I’d tell them that this isn’t right.” I knew more questions of clarification would follow, so I saved them their breath and continued onwards. “They don’t prepare us for this stuff. All they ever told us was that if we prayed enough we’d be fine. And then it doesn’t work and things come up, things out of our control, and they don’t know what to do with us anymore.” I wasn’t even sure whom exactly I was talking about. The church? The whole town? My own parents?

“I’d do what I do best.” I looked to Henry and Carla. “I’d open my big mouth and tell them what it feels like to have the one place you’re supposed to always feel safe in, always feel at home in, always feel like you can turn to, turn its back on you.”

“Would they even listen though?” Henry asked, sitting up once more.

“I’d make them listen.”

Carla and Henry were both looking at me.

“Then do it,” Henry said.

Carla looked to him.

He met that gaze. “I’m serious. Let’s do it.”

“Are you crazy?” I asked.

“We’re revolutionaries, remember?” He smiled. “We’ve faced thousands of monsters, saved hundred of kingdoms. We’ve always used swords. This time, let’s use words.”

“And how exactly do we get them to listen?” Carla turned to him. “How do we even say everything?”

How quickly it had turned to a “ _we,”_ to an “ _us_.”

“You like to write, don’t you?” Henry said, stretching his arms high to the heavens. “You used to be our scribe, remember?” (What he meant was that I used to write our “adventures” down. Quite terribly, if I’m being honest.) “Write a letter.”

“What?” I protested. “No.”

“I’m serious,” he dropped his arms. “Let’s write a letter. Let’s tell them this. Tell them how it’s been. How it feels to be suffocated by their deaf care.”

“They won’t listen,” I insisted.

Carla watched me for a moment before digging through her purse, drawing out a spiraled notebook and a pen. She held them out to me. “We won’t know until we try.” She shook them once, a _take-it_ gesture. “Write our letter.”

I laughed at the preposterous nature of the whole thing even as I accepted both the paper and the pen. “This is ridiculous,” I said.

“Ridiculous,” Henry agreed. “But necessary.”

“We could get in trouble,” I looked between them.

“Then don’t sign our names,” Carla encouraged.

“What the hell do I sign it with then?”

IV

He was telling a story of a cat – one abandoned and forgotten on the side of the road, afraid and hungry, one that a family had taken in and cared for. Stories, a common accompaniment to his sermons, made sitting in one position for an hour and a half tolerable. At least for me, stories helped me pay attention more.

“Fellowship,” Mr. Sanchez’s voice boomed over the crowd, never losing the authority of a man with something important to say. Mid-sermon, he continued on from that simple word, “Is as necessary as the hand of God. The hand that reached out to you, it is the _fellowship_ that cultivates relationships.” He took a breath – a long one, and was silent for a moment. Theatrical really, I thought. If Henry were sitting beside me, I would have leaned in to tell him so. But he was sitting to the left side with his mom and sister. And Carla, who I would not have said that to, was in the front row, about five ahead of where I sat with my own parents.

“This place is supposed to be the nurturing force that takes in those lost and hungry and cold from the outside. This building is supposed to be a sanctuary. This community, a family.” He looked around the room. “I know, even for some of you, the idea of the church as a family rings in something without care or the right nurture – something blind to your pain, something ignorant of who you are. For some of you, this church may have failed you just as much as your own families did.”

It had been three weeks. Almost a month since we climbed back down that rock, retreated down that path, drove away, and parted ways. It had been a few days shorter of that since I dropped the letter on Mr. Sanchez’s desk and heard not a single word about its existence since – almost as if it had never even happened.

Under the possibility of where the man on stage was going, my heart kicked into overdrive. I could barely hold my breathing steady as I turned my head and found Henry was already looking back at me.

“We have failed,” Mr. Sanchez continued.

The shuffling of discomfort whispered through the auditorium in echoes.

“We have failed,” he repeated, more assertive, nodding his head. “I know we have failed, because I have been told so.”

From within his leather bound, worn beyond all measure of time, Bible, he pulled a collection of lined pages, torn half-hazzardly from a notebook. He ran his thumbs over the worn surface, crinkled in a way they had not been when I laid them on his desk.

Carla looked over her shoulder at me, eyes widened when they met mine for a half second before she was looking forward again, trying to disguise the movement with a small cough. I think that just made it less subtle.

“I didn’t know,” he continued into the vacuum of silence he had created – _we_ had created through him. He nodded his head. “I didn’t know what was going on in the hearts of our youths, even though it was never hidden from me. The contents of these pages – this letter, left on my desk a few weeks ago tells a story of three kids, this town, and our failure. In a way, it is their testimony.”

I had never thought of it like that.

“To spare their identities, I will not share with you all that they shared with me. But I would like to share with you their conclusion. You don’t have to agree with it. I have not even sorted out my own thoughts on the matter. But I think we need to at least do what they have requested of us: I think we need to listen.”

I couldn’t breathe as he opened the folded pages and flipped through to the last one – couldn’t hear anything over the pounding of my pulse within my own ears and his voice which began to speak my words:

_“Growing up this state, in this town — it has come to define us in all the ways we have since turned around to define it by. When we think of this place, this town, this church, we think home. We think of mountains and castles made of rock. We think of wind, and snow in May. But mostly, we think of change. In the short time of our limited lives, we have had to become comfortable with change: the constantly changing weather, the changing population, the changing infrastructure — the change in ourselves._

_We were never prepared for the roads change would lead us down. Never prepared for the darkness that accompanied getting older. The solutions we were promised would work sometimes failed us. And when we returned to you, broken and scared, confused and needing support, the change you saw in us scared you._

_We know change can be scary. But when we think of this state, this region we’ve known, we think of how it began: with change, with expansion, with adventure._

_When we stare out over this part of the world, in every direction available to us — when we look at ourselves and when we look at you, we need you to know that it’s time once more. Time for change, for expansion – and maybe even for a little bit of adventure…”_

My words in his voice held more authority than they had ever had when coming from my own lips. The silly words of an upset teen sounded like a declaration in the halls of the church, in the rows of people who were actually listening, actually hearing.

The panic – always present – didn’t fade, but it didn’t need to when the accompanying feeling, growing within, had become so strong. Something I hadn’t felt in a long time.

I looked to my parents, finding their eyes straight ahead. I looked to Henry’s and found the same. And Carla’s dad, the very one speaking the words –

I looked to them, and found them looking back.

We were being heard.

And it felt – well, it felt…

It felt exactly like hope.

_“You’re going to lose us,”_ he continued to speak my words, _“…_

_All of us. If you don’t change. If you don’t listen. We still believe. In this. In you. We still believe. But we need more. We cannot always feel like the doors of our sanctuary will close on us if we say these words. We need you to hear us._

_We need you to listen._

_Sincerely,_

_Gay, Astray, and Not-Okay.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoy this story, please share the link with others. Thank you for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/brjfaricy/)


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